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ZOE is a bit underwhelming actually. I logged in the PST VR room, and besides the hilarity that is ZOE+flamethrowers, I didn't feel any significant difference with the other MAX weapons. Blueshifts and Quasars kill a bit faster, and feel as they should have been without ZOE, but nothing spectacular. Starfires need 4 full charges to take a Vanguard from the front, so I guess that is a slight improvement. And I didn't feel as if I were moving faster. Perhaps it is bugged?

starfires are atrocious. not only do they look like crap, but their COF is also going to make hitting stuff beyond 30m extremely hard. I'm not going to get them ... ever, i think.

As for ZOE + AI: it doesn't feel much different because the +25% boost it provides lowers the STK by 1 bullet. I guess that'll make the nebulas the weapon that synergises best with it?

The Starfire CoF has been improved somewhat. Still, it really bothers me that after releasing the Lancer and having seen and solved the CoF issues with that, they are repeating them. And the underwhelming ZOE thing.

On that note: For some reason, I think that SOE treats VS with too much caution. As if VS are OP across the board, and every VS weapon and ability introduced will completely unbalance the game. Lancer had ridiculous CoF, yet the Phoenix got introduced as a camera guided sniper, and the Striker as a 5-in-1 Annihilator. Lockdown doubles RoF, and the Riot Shield is as if you have almost 2 squads standing in front of you absorbing bullets (20,000 hp!). WTF?!?!

I'm hoping that SOE don't apply the lockdown and ZOE damage buffs to Burster MAXes, as those things have an alarmingly short TTK on an ESF to begin with.

I think Higby tweeted that those two are going to have reduced impact on NS weapons, such as the Bursters and the upcoming Flamethrowers and Grenade Launchers. They will only apply full bonuses to Empire Specific weapons.

"Quantacat's name is still recognised even if he watches on with detached eyes like Peter Molyneux over a cube in 3D space, staring at it with tears in his eyes, softly whispering... Someday they'll get it." - The Conclave

unless they add more downside to either mode. like +50% frag damage. or sniper damage. or somesuch

No that ruins the ability simply to allow it be used with weapons that cannot be balanced around said ability, it also leaves the NC out to dry since their ability as no effect on the weapons. Much simpler and more logical to just not have them work on NS weapons, which seems to be the case now anyway =)

As it seems rank 3 and 4 make a huge difference, requiring 4 c4 to blow up a sunderer.
I will head to VR right away and try to confirm. Stay tuned.

*edit*
Yep. Bloackade armor 4 will require 4 c4 (that's a lot of 4s) to blow up a sundi (from any direction). Three c4 will not even make it burn (although only the slightest additional damage will)
So blockade armor 3 should require three c4 to blow up a sundi. With that a single LA will not be able to blow up a parked sundi on its own.
Sadly, level 4 also is (as many high level certs) is 1000 certs. But level 3 can be achieved rather easily.

Getting blockade armor might be a good idea when parking it in positions where you can cover the ground level approach (engineers) more easily and people will come for it in the death from above manner. Especially since it also gives additional protection against ESFs and Libs main as well as secondary weapons.

All we need now is a way to remove planted mines. Didn't SOE mention that they are working on this?

There are bigger, but seeing as the likes of SYND and XANAX never seem to be actually working as an outfit, I picked the bigger yet coordinated ones.

RPS is huge in terms of total members, but BRTD have as many actives. I presume these others cull inactives pretty aggressively, as they have way, way higher average stats than us, with between twice and five times the average play time. In terms of the only real performance stat on the comparison, all look pretty similar, save for BRTD who have noticeably more captures and defences on the list.

Holy shit 'murica. You guys make RPS look small and exceedingly casual. At least double the average play times and much higher average XP/Br, with actives approaching or exceeding our total. Do these outfits wind up effectively being the faction on their servers?

So the french outfit, the Italian one and DIG. Would like to have included ISK as well, but a limit of 4. Interstingly, despite their zergfit history (and they still don't look mega organized), DIG easily top the playtime and BR/XP charts, with a comparable number of actives to RPS. I'm suprised what a presence MDK achieve with their numbers - I guess they just stick together really tight.

Another interesting thing going through this is how many huge outfits are barely noticeable. BURP are 3rd biggest Vanu for example. Out of the top 10 outfits (by member count) on Miller, I'd only think to mention having spotted about half of the, the rest I'd just write off as Randoms/too small to make a difference.

"Quantacat's name is still recognised even if he watches on with detached eyes like Peter Molyneux over a cube in 3D space, staring at it with tears in his eyes, softly whispering... Someday they'll get it." - The Conclave

Heh. the reason our 'stats' are so low is because we have 458 inactives--i.e., people that haven't logged in more than a month. Of these 458, 150 haven't logged in since december and 312 haven't logged in since the end of february.

I wouldn't mind culling people, to be honest. Everyone that hasn't been online for months and is below BR 10 clearly didn't enjoy the game enough to stay.

6:1 Defence to Capture ratio is good. I think it shows that we're really not part of the unwashed masses.

It's always been the preserve of organised outfits and squads to mount successful defence rather than just sweeping around the map not even caring if someone else is following them to re-cap. I also enjoy when we sit and defend a base to distract resources away from stopping the VS zerg. Also, thank you for statistics, CMaster.